


It's a Process

by orro



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 07:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orro/pseuds/orro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has adjusted to Night Vale and Cecil doesn’t always know how to feel about it. Feelings are weird like that. You think certain ones should happen, like satisfaction or joy, but instead worry and dismay show up. Feelings are rude and should learn that the polite thing to do is to call ahead when they’re going to cancel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Process

 

Cecil sighed for the umpteenth time as he watched Carlos poke at the samples collected from the Whispering Forest. He slid down to lean his head on the counter, cold as it was. Apparently laboratories, even ones next to fast food services, were always freezing, Carlos had explained the first time he’d invited Cecil in.

 

Not that he got tired of watching Carlos work on his science. But between the stool’s uneven legs and the fact that he would swear he could see his own breath in here, it meant that he was hardly comfortable for prolonged hot scientist oogling

 

“Who did you pick to use as a sample?” Cecil asked as the tree bark whistled cheerfully but dreadfully out of tune.

 

Carlos winced a little at the reminder that the trees had once been people. He gave the bark a grimace then pulled out a pair of gloves. Cecil smiled at the loud snap as Carlos put them on. Which was adorable, but really now, it’s not like temporarily pushing it out of one’s mind changed the fact that they had once been people.

 

“The samples are numbered, you’d have to check the list,” Carlos said, gesturing to a neat stack of notebooks, and Cecil nodded thoughtfully, though he made no move to reach for it. He briefly wondered who had retrieved the samples before just as quickly ceasing to think about it. There was no proof that thinking about the Whispering Forest was dangerous but best not to risk it.

 

Cecil sat up as he remembered something.

 

“Oh! I thought I should tell you, since we don’t give out warnings in order to nab the citizens with type O, next weekend is the Council-”

 

“-mandated blood drive,” Carlos finished for him, slicing into the bark. It fell silent as Carlos worked, which Cecil was thankful for. It’d been hard to think with such a horrible sound. “Yeah, I know. We found it marked on our calendar. I think it was Merry. Or Jacob. Whichever secret police is assigned to us.”

 

“Oh.” Cecil frowned a little, mostly to himself. He leaned back down on the counter. “Um. Okay then.”

 

“Am I allowed to ask what they plan to do with the town’s blood?”

 

“I wouldn’t ask,” Cecil said seriously. Scientists always wanted to question, to know.

 

Carlos chuckled under his breath and placed the strip of bark on the glass slides, sliding it under the microscope. Cecil watched, waiting for him to ask again, but Carlos didn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

"I should be happy. This should be a joyous occasion. I mean, Carlos remembered to bring the meat for the squirrels! I didn't even have to remind him, he just, showed up once I was done with my shift, and we made our offerings."

 

Cecil was on his bed, talking to the lumpy pillow he kept only because it had a recording device implanted in it. The Sheriff's Secret Police had worked so hard at developing their line of eavesdropping bedding supplies, and it seemed cruel to mention to them that the pillows were lumpy and that the sheets were too thin.

 

"Yeah, I would think you'd be thrilled?" The pillow said, vibrating a little as it spoke.

 

Cecil rolled over onto his side to stare at the pillow.

 

"I know! I'm so disappointed in myself. I haven't even said anything on the radio, because I don't even know how I feel about it. I mean, part of me is totally happy with this, and the other part is just..."

 

"Void?" the officer suggested.

 

"Oh goodness no, not void. More like. Hrm. Yarpselion?"

 

"Ugh, that's a terrible shade."

 

Cecil didn't speak for a moment. He hugged his pillow and played with the corners.

 

"Carlos said yarpselion isn't a real color. Do you think he's colorblind? I don’t think he would have survived as long if he had been, but it can develop, right?"

 

"If he is, he's going to have to report to the City Council for color reeducation," the officer said. It didn’t speak for a moment as it marshalled its thoughts. "Also, I'm not a therapist, you know."

 

"You interrupted me.” Cecil wasn’t sure if there was a camera in there as well, but he glared at the pillow anyway.

 

"It was hard to discern if your wailing was a cry for help or not. I had to be sure you weren't being attacked by those new spatulas-"

 

"I thought the mayor said those were safe?" Cecil asked, in a bit of a dry tone.

 

The officer didn't speak for a minute. Then something clicked. Cecil shook his head, amused. He technically wasn’t supposed to use the sherriff’s secret police as a sounding board, of course, but if they were always listening in, well, they could at least be personally useful every now and then, right?

 

Besides, he was way more interesting when he was awake than when he was asleep. He hadn’t talked in his sleep in years, and despite what Carlos said, he definitely didn’t snore in his sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

“We need milk,” Carlos said, while standing stock still, staring across at the dairy aisle.

 

Cecil was manning the shopping list, since Carlos refused to touch it. But with the ban on pens still in effect, blood was really the handiest supply at times. And it wasn’t like it was Cecil’s blood anyway. Carlos had such silly ideas sometimes.

 

Cecil looked around, double checking that they were still in the produce section, and that they hadn’t stepped into a wormhole that deposited them in the dairy section. Not that wormholes were common in the Ralph’s but anything was possible.

 

“I can go get it-”

 

“I think that’s the Glow Cloud.”

 

“What?”

 

Carlos blinked, then looked at him, and nodded to the list.

 

“We’ll come back for it later. What’s next?”

 

Cecil didn’t move.

 

“You’re not going to go investigate it?”

 

“No?” Carlos was inspecting the tomatoes. He held one up, gave it a stern look as if it was daring him to begin performing experiments right then and there, then picked another up. “We don’t need to bother the Glow Cloud. If that’s it, of course. It could just be a time loop or something. I’m sure a store employee will either take care of it or direct us away if it’s really dangerous.”

 

“But. You always investigate these sorts of things!”

 

Carlos frowned as he placed the tomatoes in a bag, wrapping and tying the bag with a twist tie. He set the vegetables in the cart and began pushing it towards the peppers at the end of the lane.

 

“I thought you wanted to show me how you make your casserole?”

 

“Yeah but-”

 

“I’m really looking forward to seeing this so called Best Casserole in all of Night Vale.”

 

“You saw the ribbon,” Cecil said, a little offended now.

 

“But I haven’t tasted it,” Carlos said with a grin. “I can’t just take something like that on blind faith, Cecil. I have to test it out myself.”

 

“Oh I see what you’re doing, Mister. Well, you get ready to eat those words. Or the casserole. You don’t want to eat words.”

 

Carlos shook his head and smiled at Cecil, then stopped as he nearly ran the cart into a woman. She was running into displays and knocking them over without stopping. It was definitely a case of possession by Glow Cloud, but Cecil still gave Carlos a look. Not that Carlos noticed; he was looking at the dairy aisle again, deciding whether to risk running over to grab the milk or if he would still be in the cloud’s radius.

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s a good thing that Carlos is adjusting,” Cecil said, as he sipped his coffee in the break room. “It is a good thing.”

 

The intern he was talking to nodded but didn’t say anything. The nice thing about interns was they usually died before they could spread anything around that Cecil had said. The bad thing, of course, was that they died too quickly so he never really got a chance to build a rapport with one.

 

Dana had proved promising but she’d fallen in the line of community radio, though he still held out hope for her. Her texts generally came back too garbled to really engage in long, soulful discussions about suspiciously well-adjusted boyfriend though.

 

“I mean, of course I’m always going to worry over him. He’s always running towards the danger, instead of hiding under his desk like normal people. But now, I mean, sometimes he’ll call first? And he’s gotten a lot better at using the bloodstone I gave him.”

 

Cecil stopped to take another drink.

 

“There are definite advantages,” Intern Jem said. “But uh, Mr. Palmer, shouldn’t I get to delivering these memos-?”

 

“Right? Like, this can only be a good thing, so why doesn’t it always feel like that?” Cecil ignored Jem’s question, waving his hand around a bit now. “Is it me? I am defective in some fundamental relationship way that I can’t be happy that my boyfriend doesn’t leap into the maw of danger?”

 

The intern blinked at all of the negatives and was trying to puzzle them out while Cecil kept going.

 

“I mean, he’s still completely obsessed about science! That’s just Carlos, and I’m okay with that. It’s part of his charm. It’s less charming when he forgets about dinner plans, but he’s getting better! But it’s like-”

 

There was a scream that made their ears pop, and they both dived under the coffee table.

 

“What was that?” Jem asked, his right ear bleeding.

 

“I think it was Khoshekh.” Cecil glanced at the unopened bag of cat food. “He wasn’t fed today?”

 

“Intern Amelia was supposed to…” Jem trailed off, eyes wide open as he remembered that she’d been absorbed into the sidewalk earlier today. He took off at a sprint, forgetting to take the bag with him.

 

Cecil sighed and calmly went over to scoop out the requisite amount of pellets. Intern Jem’s fear was totally unfounded. As if Khoshekh was some common rabid beast. He would understand Amelia’s inability to feed him due to a sudden case of absorption. Cats were perfectly reasonable as long as you had the proper warding spells.

 

And a can of tuna didn’t hurt either.

 

* * *

 

 

“Do we have any spray bottles?” Carlos asked Cecil’s shoulders from where they were slumped together on the couch. They’d been watching a documentary, even as Cecil had side eyed it. Dolphins being mammals indeed! Coral reefs being natural! Ocean currents! He didn’t have a problem with a scientist enjoying a woefully inaccurate science fiction show, but Carlos didn’t have to lie about it.

 

Cecil snuggled his cheek against Carlos’ hair, almost completely forgetting what Carlos had asked.

 

“I don’t know,” he said eventually.

 

Carlos on top of him so soothing, he wanted to sleep right there on the couch. It was the feel of being pressed, but not squashed, that was so comforting. As if Carlos could keep him safe just by shielding him from all the terrors of life. Of course, that was grossly untrue, but what was imagination for it not to dream up wild scenarios with your significant other in which he daringly rescued you?

 

“They all melted the last time. Those creatures that descended from the rainbows melted them somehow. I think it was some form of radiation, because they didn’t have to touch them.” Carlos paused, shifting his head around. “I guess it’s just as well that they melted.”

 

“If only they had been leprechauns.” Cecil sighed. “Unless those are leprachauns and we’ve been miscatergorizing them this whole time, in which I can sort of understand why they went on a murderous rampage through our fair town.”

 

“We’re going to need some more then,” Carlos said, though he made no move to get up.

 

“It can wait,” Cecil said, trying to subtly hold onto Carlos more. Unfortunately his version of subtle was different from Carlos, because he wrapped his arms and legs around his boyfriend, and it caused a rumble to emanate from Carlos’ chest in laughter.

 

“We really need them, considering tomorrow the weather is going to be void with a chance of magenta.”

 

“Nope, tomorrow is void again,” Cecil said. “Pure void. No shades tomorrow.”

 

“Cecil, it’s definitely void with a chance of magenta. You said so yourself.”

 

Cecil sighed and marshalled his thoughts into something more coherent than ‘armful of perfect warm beautiful scientist boyfriend’. He mentally ran back through his broadcast as Carlos patiently waited.

 

“You got the weather more right than me,” Cecil said, eyes wide in his shock.

 

Carlos shrugged, completely unfazed by Cecil’s words.

 

“It’s been void most of the week so it’s not odd that you’d-”

 

“Carlos, this is serious! Learning the weather is one of the final steps of citizenship! We can’t be caught unaware!”

 

Carlos blinked at the three exclamation points, but to Cecil’s disappointment, he made no other gesture as to note the occasion.

 

“I guess I’m not technically a resident. Kind of have been thinking of myself as one since, you know-”

 

“Oh silly Carlos. Almost dying is no excuse for avoiding paperwork,” Cecil said, mostly in jest. He wiggled his hand out so he could pat Carlos’ head.

 

Carlos darkly muttered something about pens and Cecil tuned him out for both of their sakes, snuggling his nose into Carlos’ scalp instead.

 

* * *

 

 

“If these feelings are from your delivery service, I’m going to admit, I’m inclined to give a less than kind review,” Cecil said to the steering wheel. The steering wheel didn’t respond, though his car rocked in place a little, clearly wanting to get on the road.

 

He wasn’t ready to go back into his apartment, especially since Carlos had called to tell him he was going to be at the lab for a couple of extra hours. That, Cecil could handle. It wasn’t fun, but it was part of Carlos, and he could cycle from disappointed but understanding in three minutes, provided there was a pleasant breeze to help the cycle along.

 

It was that Carlos had written an accompanying text in Modified Sumerian that made Cecil’s insides churn, and not in that ‘pleasant’ way after eating one of Big Rico’s new wheatless bread sticks. Yeah, sure, it was a standard ‘be safe’ phrase; Carlos might not even know what it precisely meant.

 

Cecil gently hit his head against the steering wheel. This was all ridiculous. Most of the time he was fine that Carlos had effectively ceased to be their most significant outsider. It was better this way. Carlos was infinitely safer when he wasn’t running headfirst into sentient clouds or malevolent shadows.

 

He still did that, of course, but sometimes he’d stop and assess the danger to his personal self. Carlos was well aware that Cecil approved of heroic science, but he was less approving of near fatal episodes.

 

“I will give you a bad review, I swear,” Cecil said. He made his hand into a fist. “A one star review! Don’t tempt me!”

 

He sighed, hoped his warning got through, and started the car.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a shout and Carlos bolted out of the shower, still fully clothed. His eyes were wide open in his panic. Really, no one pulled off ‘frightened for my life’ like Carlos did, and Cecil had seen plenty of scared looks in his time. Cecil looked up from where he was sitting at the kitchen table, cutting coupons from the newspaper.

 

“There’s something coming out of the drain,” Carlos gasped, and Cecil just smiled, shaking his head fondly.

 

“That usually happens when we get the full moon on a Sunday. Oh that little rascal is just adorable, isn’t he?”

 

Carlos looked at him in disbelief. Cecil hid his smile behind his hand. Carlos was definitely getting used to Night Vale but some small things still got to him. It reminded Cecil of when he’d originally came, screaming about earthquakes and clocks.

 

“Cecil. It’s got- it’s a- I don’t know what it is!”

 

“Has he molted?” Cecil asked, cutting around an offer for ‘buy three watermelons, get a firemelon half off’. “Last time he had a beautiful purple coat of scales. We don’t get to keep them, of course, the Sheriff's Secret Police will come around to collect them, but we might be able to sneak one or two so you can study it.”

 

Carlos stopped and blinked at him.

 

“It didn’t have scales. It was more, slimy. And feathers.”

 

Cecil stopped and blinked at him.

 

“Really? Hm. That’s. That’s probably something else then.”

 

Cecil got up and grabbed his municipally mandated stainless steel baseball bat as Carlos went to get a knife from the kitchen. They stopped at the bathroom door, waiting, listening to the snuffling sounds the creature was making and Cecil smiled to himself inside of his head.

 

Carlos’ eyes were wide open with fear and adrenaline, looking magnificent as always.

 

Cecil inwardly shook his head at himself. Oh the dichotomy of feelings and reality. What a sure sign that he was alive. Depending on what was inside of the shower, he might not be alive for much longer, and he took a moment to relish the rush of fear, the reassurance Carlos brought him simply by standing right by his side, and the wonderment of human emotions.

 

“On three,” he whispered to Carlos, and together, they flung the door open and faced their unknown foe.

 


End file.
